The Omega's Alpha (MM Gay Mpreg Shifter Romance) (Mercy Hills Pack Book 4) Read online

  The Omega’s Alpha

  Mercy Hills Pack Book Four

  Ann-Katrin Byrde

  Cover Art by

  Ana J Phoenix

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  About the Author

  Like This Story?

  Other Books by Ann-Katrin

  Fires of Fate

  Coming Soon! A Brand New Series!

  © 2017 Ann-Katrin Byrde

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. All resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Please don’t read if you are under eighteen.

  Sign up for Ann-Katrin’s mailing list!

  Sign up here

  And get a free bonus short—Mac and Jason’s first Valentine’s Day together.

  Or

  Join the Byrde House

  For even more fun!

  So many people helped out with pushing this story out the door. First of all, thank you to the members of the Byrde House, who helped with naming babies all through this book. The folks in chat, who cheered me on when I thought this book would never end. And Ana J. Phoenix, who isn’t just an amazing cover artist, but a great friend, with awesome chocolate, who kept me going through these past weeks when all I wanted to do was melt into a puddle of angst.

  Foreword

  Timelines. Timelines are fun. This book was supposed to be book five, but so many people wanted Holland and Quin to get their happy ending, I ended up moving their book to fourth in the series. It meant pulling some of the storyline from Legally Mated into The Omega’s Alpha. Because of this, the book is incredibly long—like, 141,000 words (yes, longer than Abel’s Omega). It also means going way, way back in time.

  The Omega’s Alpha overlaps the last half of Abel’s Omega, actually starting just after Abel loses his position as Alpha of Mercy Hills and just before Taden is born. The entire storyline of Duke’s Baby Deal occurs in the background during the first half of The Omega’s Alpha. Characters pop in and out—you’ll see Cas again, and Duke and Edmond, Jason and Mac, and Holland’s little brother Cale (and isn’t he a pistol!). Garrick and Laine are back, and you’ll meet some of Quin’s old Marine buddies.

  Chapter One

  Quin was walking on a dusty road to nowhere. He was at the head of his pack—his soldiers—gun cradled in his arms, borrowing as heavily from his wolf as he could, even though he knew he’d pay for it later. Once they were safe, he could pass the responsibility on to someone else while he recovered, but he had to get them to safety first. Except, when he spun in a slow circle to check on them all, it wasn’t the humans he’d known when he’d been overseas, but his pack. His real pack.

  He was leading a bunch of Mercy Hills shifters. Abel, and Cas, though he hadn’t seen Cas in eight years and in the dream he was still a scrawny teenager. Ozgur, who had been his best friend until they turned nine and Ozgur’s family had moved away to Winter Moon because he could work on cars there. He didn’t look anything like Ozgur had, but somehow Quin knew it was him. An older woman whose name he couldn’t remember but he knew in that same dream certainty that she was from Mercy Hills. A few others—people he knew well, some he just knew by sight.

  And then it all went to shit.

  A heavy wave of doom rushed over him. He tried to get them to run, to take cover, to get out of the way of whatever it was that was coming, while trying to walk through air like cement, his body refusing to obey his commands. The gun in his arms twitched and he looked down and it wasn’t his gun anymore, but Cas. Or what was left of him.

  “Hey, Grampa.” Cas grinned, his jawbone hanging loose and sickening in his face. Quin tried to put it back, because it shouldn’t be attached only on one side, but it kept slipping out of his hand and he still had to run, but he was so tired, and then they were all dead, all but him. He couldn’t see them, but he knew it—

  Quin woke up face down on the bedroom floor, next to the little table that held his alarm clock, his phone, his glass of water. The table was on its side, the phone half in and half out of the puddle forming in front of the glass. Stupidly, he stared at it, then reached out and batted it away from the water. It skittered across the fake wood of the floor, leaving a thin damp trace of its passing, and came to a stop against the far wall with a clunk.

  He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the floor. His nights had been broken by nightmares since leaving the army, but nothing like this. They were getting worse, and more frequent, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He supposed he could talk to Adelaide. He could try to access his veteran’s benefits, but he’d have to go outside walls for that and, well—he’d just gotten home.

  Damn, had it really been only a month?

  And just like that, his brain kicked off into overdrive, and any chance of getting to sleep disappeared in a puff of smoke. Not that sleep was likely after one of those dreams, with his heart still racing and all his senses straining for threats that weren’t really there. But sometimes he could just roll over and force himself to sleep, like he had before he’d come home.

  Not today.

  Quin sat up in bed and scrubbed his hands over his face and through his hair until the last cobwebby feel of the dream had left him. The sky was still pitch black outside his window—no one would be awake to distract him. Might as well get some work done. He reminded himself that it would get better—he’d only been Alpha for a month and this stage where everything seemed to take him two times longer than Abel said it should would eventually come to an end.

  He pushed himself to his feet and shambled toward the bathroom.

  Chapter Two

  A couple of hours and halfway through his second cup of coffee later, Quin’s phone rang.

  “Hey, you want to come over for breakfast?” Abel’s voice bounded out of the phone, sounding far too cheerful for this early in the morning. Whatever time that was—he’d kind of lost track. Quin glanced at the clock on the computer screen. Six o’clock. Okay, it wasn’t that early, but he’d been up since three, and it was the third day in a row this had happened. He was more tired than hungry, but the lack of sleep and the stack of paperwork, reports, and decisions to be made reminded him too much of the army. It laid a veil of history over everything he looked at that colored it all dust-be
ige and dead, and sucked some of the joy out of being home. But being home was still better than being in the army.

  “Sure.” He’d only been home a month, barely scratched the surface of this new life, but he’d already figured out that Abel’s pups could chase away the ghosts of the past better than anything else. And there were—other—reasons for him to visit as well. “Right now?”

  “Whenever you get here. Bax and Holland put together some sort of baked egg thing that they promise is good enough even the pups will eat it.”

  Quin chuckled. “I’ll be right down.”

  “I do my best to hold off the ravening hoards.”

  Quin stared at his phone for a moment after Abel hung up and tried to put his thoughts in order again. Unfortunately, where Holland was concerned, instinct took point in that hunt and he found himself thinking things he had no right to think. Hell, he hardly knew the other man. And even if he did, it wasn’t like Quin was good mate material, with the long hours and the nightmares and the …other symptoms.

  He pushed it all away, the memories that rushed forward unbidden at odd moments, the sensation of being watched, the tension when things got too quiet around him. Maybe that was what Abel’s pups did for him—they buried the silence in their joy in life.

  The coffee in his cup was lukewarm. He debated drinking it anyway just for the caffeine, then shook his head and dumped it in the kitchen sink. There’d be better at Abel’s and, to be honest, what was a half-mug of cheap instant going to do for him anyway? It was Bax’s one personal splurge, and one that Quin appreciated whole-heartedly. He’d have to find some expensive brand of beans to give him for Christmas, but he didn’t know a damn thing about coffee except that sometimes it kept him awake.

  Having in-laws was both fun and stressful.

  It wasn’t quite raining, more a heavy drizzle that was still on the fence about whether it wanted to be mist of full on rain. Quin pulled the brim of his ball cap down over his head and tugged the neck of his winter jacket closer, squinting up at the sky. Fuck it. He went back into the building and signed out one of the pack’s vehicles, a small Ford sedan with a pristine interior.

  In the car, it took less than ten minutes to get to Abel’s house. He pulled up in front of the building with its welcoming porch and the lights gleaming through the windows like beacons of warmth. The roads still hadn’t been officially created here, though the repeated press of feet and tires had worn tracks from the town to this still mostly unpopulated area. Not for long—Abel had done amazing things since he’d taken over as Alpha. Would Quin do as well? He hoped so.

  The front door opened and a little ball of fur came pelting out onto the porch, deftly evading his father’s attempt to grab him before he could escape. The dark tips on his ears identified him as Fan. The second one to sneak out past her father’s legs had more brown around the cheeks and chest—Beatrice. Noah waddled out to the door in human form, but showed more sense than his brother and sister and hung out in the warmth of the entryway.

  The puppies barked at him and Abel crept out onto the damp boards in his sock feet to try to push them back inside. It made Quin want to laugh, but laughter was still difficult for him, so he smiled and climbed the steps up onto the porch.

  He and Abel hugged briefly. “Let’s get inside before they get all wet and I end up on the couch.”

  Quin looked at him sharply, wondering if he’d read Bax wrong the few times he’d met him, but Abel’s eyes danced and it was enough hint for Quin to realize that Abel was joking. His suspicion was confirmed when Bax, belly huge with Abel’s first pup of his own line, floated slowly out of the kitchen. “Abel! I’d never do that. At least, not with winter coming on. I’d freeze.” Abel grinned and put an arm around Bax’s waist to pull him into a kiss, the pups leaping around their feet. Quin relaxed and reminded himself that this was pack, and omegas were notorious for their devotion to their mates—after twenty years of watching every interaction he had with his command structure, he was hunting problems where there weren’t any. It was good that Abel had someone he could joke with.

  Bax laughed and shooed them all into the kitchen with offers of coffee, tea, and snacks to tide them over until breakfast was perfectly ready.

  And there he was—Holland.

  He moved like a wolf in his prime, ease and grace and surety of step. His hair shone sleek black, the barest hint of curl at the ends where they caressed his shoulders. He was cutting fruit into small pieces and arranging it onto two plates and Quin looked away before he could make a fool of himself. It was insanity to lose his heart over a man he’d only exchanged a few, awkward words with. And he saw Holland, and knew he wasn’t what the young omega needed. He was too needy himself right now to do for Holland anything that would be good for him.

  Bax showed him to a chair and moved away with ponderous steps.

  Holland made a face at him. “Sit down.”

  “I’m fine. It’s not like it’s my first,” Bax replied. He began lining up mugs on the counter, three over by the coffee maker, another by the stove where the kettle creaked and popped as the water within warmed.

  “You’re a week away from your due date,” Holland said in a wry tone that tugged at the corners of Quin’s mouth, urging him to smile.

  Bax gave him a look and Holland shook his head and his lips curved gently. He began pouring coffee into mugs. “Go sit, there’s nothing left to do until it’s done cooking.” He got his way this time and Bax took a seat at the table next to Abel and across from Quin, the pups arranged around the rest of the table. The pups already had juice, and pieces of toast cut, Quin thought, according to their ages.

  Holland brought the coffee over, set out a small pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar, then moved away to pour hot water over tea bags in a mug. He brought that over to Abel, then stepped away to open the oven and peer inside. Seeming satisfied with what he saw, he lifted a stack of plates out of the cupboard and set them on the counter beside the stove.

  Bax started to get up and Holland turned around and pointed a finger at him. “Sit,” he said, and Quin caught Holland’s slightly uncertain glance in his direction, as if Holland thought Quin would be angry with Holland’s tone.

  In response, Quin picked up his cup of coffee and sipped at it, then turned to Abel. “I think we have the food organized for the full moon.” He nodded at Bax. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

  Bax cast Abel a significant glance, and Abel nodded. “We’ve been talking about that. We thought we might ask Holland to look after the office while Bax was off, and have Cale come part time, and Bram, to help out with the pups. It’ll mean some shuffling at the day care, but they’re both interested in the extra pack credits to spend, especially with Christmas coming up.”

  Abel would be paying back into the pack coffers what it cost the pack to have those two working directly for him and not the pack in general. Quin almost asked him if he could afford the added cost, but bit his tongue just in time. They were still negotiating around and through the traditional view of omegas, and he realized at that moment that he didn’t know if Holland was being paid for his labor or not. He assumed yes, knowing Abel.

  “Whoever you think is best?” He didn’t know his personnel here well yet, but he trusted Abel to know which of the many talented shifters here would be good. “And speaking of Christmas, what do you want?”

  Abel laughed, but before he could reply, plates laden with something deliciously savory appeared in front of them, and they fell to eating.

  It was after, when his stomach was full and his guard was down, that things went to hell on him.

  Something loud and heavy clanged behind him, sounding exactly like the opening salvo of an unexpected attack, and Quin hit the floor, pulling Fan down with him. The room smelled of hot metal and dust for a never-ending moment, then those scents faded, replaced by the homey smells of the breakfast they’d just consumed. He opened his eyes to see his family gathered around him in concern. Fan squirmed underneath his arm and he released the pup and pushed himself up to a seated position.

  Abel held one arm out to keep Bax in his seat, but had moved to crouch out of arm’s reach of Quin. “You okay?” he said in a low voice.